The Man of the 21st Century

Jeffrey Erkelens
4 min readJan 10, 2020
Art by prettysleepy1 @ Pixabay

I doubt women will ever transcend their biological predilection for strong men.

I don’t mean physically strong. I mean decisive, clear-eyed, protective, gentle, fierce, and provident. I mean the swift and majestic men poet Walt Whitman hailed in ‘Song of The Open Road.’

“Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,

Passers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,

Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides,

Tender helpers of children,

Soldiers of revolts!”

Men who know how to calm the storms inside them and simmer in self-awareness. Whose self-understanding leads to assertiveness rather than sulking, sniveling, or slamming doors. Who wrestle with their inner darkness and transmute it into light.

Daring men… welcoming storms to prove their worth and mettle and to steel their resolve. The ones Rudyard Kipling said can dream, and not make dreams their master; who can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same. Who can make one heap of all their winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, and lose, and start again at their beginnings, and never breathe a word about their loss.

Men in touch with their sensual selves; fleshy and incarnate. Lovers and contemplators of nature. Dancers and Wild men!

Vertebrates! The men described by G.K. Chesterton as having their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle. Unlike modern cowards, he said, who are all crustaceans; their hardness on the cover but all soft inside.

Cycle Breakers! Men who refuse to perpetuate their forebears’ pattern of abuse, neglect, addiction, and harmful notions of masculinity, and, instead, evolve their own, giving birth to a new generation of men — of leaders, husbands, and fathers.

Men who are unafraid of making commitments — to women, family, children, community, and their personal ideals. Who would rather die than sacrifice those ideals; the likes of Jesus, Socrates, Giordano Bruno and Thomas Moore. The great warrior bees in our human story.

Men unafraid of strong, independent women, and those who instead of seeking the ideal in fantasy…

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Jeffrey Erkelens

Flying fish. Iconoclast. Currently writing ‘The Hero in You,’ a book for boys: https://www.facebook.com/bookforboys/